Bryan Sivak, chief technology officer for the District of Columbia and a speaker at the upcoming Gov 2.0 Summit, has honed his open source message. Instead of lower cost, which he says is not the "panacea everyone thinks it is," Sivak instead focuses on the volunteerism and transparency open source provides.

When I organize a conference, I don’t just reach out to interesting speakers. I try to find people who can help to tell a story about what’s important and where the future is going. We’ve been posting speakers for the second annual Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington DC Sept 7-8, but I realized that I haven’t told the story in one place. I thought I’d try to do that here.

Government-as-platform doesn't absolve us from asking what services should be provided by a government.

Government-as-platform doesn't absolve us from asking what fundamental services should be provided by a government, as opposed to private industry. This is a big question. We didn't come up with a single universally-agreed answer before Gov 2.0, and Gov 2.0 will neither answer it for us nor let us evade the question.